Conference calls are a well-known and useful tool. Conference calls allow a plurality of people or equipment (hereinafter referred to collectively as resources) to exchange and receive data from one or more of the other resources simultaneously.
A common use of conference calls includes a traditional three-way telephone call. A traditional three-way telephone call allows three or more people who might be spread out over a large geographic area, to simultaneously hear and talk to each other. The use of conference calls has become increasingly more popular (especially when combined with video conferencing and the like) as it is a significantly easier and cheaper alternative to scheduling traditional person-to-person meetings.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method and apparatus for establishing conferences, and in particular complex conferences, which uses the same model and which reduces the amount of equipment necessary. The method and apparatus should preferably be a scalable, multichannel conference system utilizing a multiplexed processing scheme. Cost should preferably be minimized by employing only an efficient single-adder implementation. The method and apparatus should preferably allow any-to-any conferencing across all input channels and all output channels and should preferably allow passthrough channels to any output channel. Also, the method and apparatus should preferably allow low processing latency generally limited to a single frame.
Other examples of conference calls include contact centers. According to this example, a customer can communicate with two or more agents at a contact center simultaneously. The ability to conference greatly increases the experience of the customer since it allows the customer access to more than one agent who may have expertise in different areas. Another example is a monitoring, coaching, or supervisor situation where one party can hear all the parties but can only talk to or be heard by one other party (typically the agent).
While the use of conferences has greatly facilitated the ease of communicating with a plurality of people and greatly minimized travel and other expenses associated with communication over long distances, current methods and apparatus for creating conferences suffer from several disadvantages. One disadvantage of the current practice is that it is equipment extensive. Another problem is that conferencing set-up becomes increasingly complex as the number of parties increases and the relationships between the parties becomes more complex (e.g., party A can hear all parties but only talk to and be heard by party B, while party C can only hear party B, but party B can hear both parties A and C). Current conference methods require a great deal of equipment resources in order to create the more complex conferences. One current method uses special config bits (i.e., special attributes) in an attempt to create and define complex conferences. Other methods use two or more additional conferences where the output of one conference is duplicated into a second or subsequent conference using external switches. Current methods only associate a single timeslot with a single bridge.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method and apparatus for establishing conferences, and in particular complex conferences, which uses the same model and which reduces the amount of equipment necessary. The method and apparatus should preferably be a scalable, mult-channel conference system utilizing a multiplexed processing scheme. Cost should preferably be minimized by employing only an efficient single-adder implementation. The method and apparatus should preferably allow any-to-any conferencing across all input channels and all output channels and should preferably allow pass-through channels to any output channel. Also, the method and apparatus should preferably allow low processing latency generally limited to a single frame.
It is important to note that the present invention is not intended to be limited to a system or method which must satisfy one or more of any stated objects or features of the invention. It is also important to note that the present invention is not limited to the preferred, exemplary, or primary embodiment(s) described herein. Modifications and substitutions by one of ordinary skill in the art are considered to be within the scope of the present invention, which is not to be limited except by the following claims.